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Niente

Livingroom is cozy, scented with pine of the glowing tree in the corner, finally with tinsel this year because our last kitten had died at the old age of seventeen. Graciously passing away while I was gone, just like the last. Sometimes I wonder if someone is protecting me from sadness in the form of airplanes and train tickets. It just seems that way lately. And as I sit here and watch the first snow falling down outside my window and listen to the christmas movies on the television and explain to my brother he has to do his paper, I’m home. My dog sits at my feet, my cold feet, always cold. And I plan ahead – taking the train into Boston for the night, work reasons – though I’d rather walk Faneuil Hall and the Boston Common with a few people, past, present, and future. Because on one hand I want my fathers – large and warm in old work gloves that he refused to give up – as we walked Downtown Crossing looking at the lights and parts of the Enchanted Village in the windows of the local stores – until we go inside and walk through magic. And his and my mother’s eyes light up as bright as my and my brothers. And it’s perfect, as we find his old friend up in some building we aren’t supposed to be in – and she tells us to look over the floor because we may find a diamond someone has dropped from the jewelry stores on the floor. And we search and search as she remembers the day he came in to pick out an engagement ring for my mother. And I remember the story he’d used to tell about how he was listening to Christmas music on the front steps of the Needham house when he decided he was going to. And he never looked back.

But at the same time, I want to head down there with another man. I want to stroll through the Public Garden hand in hand with leather gloves and bright red scarves and show someone the most “European city” in America. And I want to kiss him on the bridge over the swan boats and I want him to love it here as much as I do. And I want to fall into a tumult of emotions – here and there, and fly back to Firenze and walk the cobblestones instead of the pavement and have the magic to make it snow and sleep under the Tuscan sky. More in love than I have ever been.

And I am torn, once again. Unsure of what direction to go but only knowing there is a deadline soon – simply because I wanted an education and did what society told me to do. Now letters in the mail and on the computer force my hand into deciding my life differently. That I cannot wander anymore. That I need to chain myself into something as critical as anything. And I’m not sure I can do it. Because all I truly want is to stop rambling on this piece of digitally created paper, take up a pen and write something meaningful that isn’t simply a train of my thoughts, an unending sentence that slithers out of my mind and through my fingers with a clicking noise instead of the scratching of a pen on paper. And I want my words to be understood and loved and coveted as something that moves people, that makes the smile and cry and understand the world just a little bit better – and how unfair it is. And maybe it will happen, but until then I have to live, I have to eat, and love, and pray. And deal with death and dying and helplessness. And love and life and newborn babies so far away I can’t see them. And all I wonder is where I’ll be, who I will be in another six months – for every six my life spins, making me dizzy, making it hard to see straight, and i see my past my present my future in one blur. And I love it, but i just want answers, and yet I’m patient enough to let them wait. I think. But I have no choice but to stand still and let the snowflakes fall on my shut-tight eyes until they melt and create tears I hadn’t cried. And I wonder if they’re from happiness or sadness coming from heaven.